Avatar was recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press as Best Picture for this year’s Golden Globes. Yet, it wasn’t even nominated by the Screen Actors Guild for Best Ensemble. For that ceremony, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds defeated The Hurt Locker and three other nominees. The victory was somewhat of an upset as many predicted that Locker had the strongest ensemble.
Locker got some payback last night as the intense war drama was awarded Best Picture by the Producers Guild of America (PGA). That was a stunning surprise, as Avatar looked to trounce the competition again. Now The Hurt Locker has become an Oscar front-runner.
Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and co-producers Nicholas Chartier and Greg Shapiro took the Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures, which is a long way of saying that The Hurt Locker won Best Picture. The other contenders were Avatar, Up In The Air, An Education, Invictus, District 9, Star Trek, Up, Precious, and Inglourious Basterds.
Pixar’s Up was also in contention for the category for animated films, which it won.
The Cove won the award for documentary achievement.
The PGA award for best picture is very often an indicator of what will win the Best Picture Oscar; thirteen of the past twenty PGA winners have also won the Academy Award. The last two years have seen the awards match up, but otherwise you’ve got to go back a while to see them start to correspond on a regular basis. So while it isn’t a cemented guarantee, the chances are good that The Hurt Locker will be win Best Picture at this years Academy Awards.